February 14, 2006

OpenGL, Copying, and Stealing

A basic tenet of copy protection and digital rights
management (DRM) is if the key and the data exist on the same machine, the
system is fundamentally not secure. Another way of looking at this is “if you can see it, you can copy it.” The web is an especially open example of
this. Any part of a website that travels
to the client computer, whether textures, audio, HTML, or client-side
scripting, can be copied. We all saw
this in the early rollout of the web, where sites would copy markup from
particularly clever sites. Of course,
this helped the development of the web, since easy copying drove down the cost
of learning, helping to spur innovation. Plus, while the technology of the world-wide web didn’t stop copying,
intellectual property law still applied, so site owners could take legal action
if they felt it was worthwhile for them to do so. This balance is at the heart of intellectual
property law: balancing temporary monopolies and the incentives to create that
go with them against the myriad societal and cultural benefits of copying.

I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but I have read the
Copyright Law of the United States – contained in Title 17 of the US
Code – and I encourage those wishing to better understand the issues to do
likewise. What is perhaps most
interesting about it is what it doesn’t have. Nowhere in the text does the word “steal” appear. This is important, especially given that most
discussions about copying in Second Life tend to involve statements like “they
stole my textures.” As Title 17 makes
clear, copying isn’t stealing. In fact, copying
isn’t necessarily a violation of copyright. Section 107 discusses a specific limitation on exclusive rights, namely
fair use. Of course, fair use isn’t fully
defined. Instead concepts like the
purpose and character of the copying, the economic impact of the copying, and
the completeness of the copying all factor in. Copying a piece of a book as part of your review? Arguably fair use. Copying the entire book in order to sell
it? Probably not. The lines aren’t all clear, but this is
intentional. Whether a copy falls under
fair use is a judgment call and thus needs humans in the loop. Merely copying something does not instantly
violate copyright.

So how does this all relate to OpenGL? (read on)

Second Life uses OpenGL to render graphics to the
screen. OpenGL provides a set of
libraries that combine geometry, textures, lights, and transforms to create rendered
3D scenes. As such, OpenGL must have
access to the geometry, textures, lights, and transforms. Those assets are not encrypted currently,
since rendering is a performance intensive application and decryption is often
CPU intensive. However, even if the data
were encrypted, we would still be forced to return to first principles, since
the data would need to be decrypted in order for it to be rendered. Thus it is not even possible in principle to
prevent copying of geometry, textures, lights, or transforms. It isn’t a question of whether Linden Lab can
block this in practice – it isn’t even possible in theory!

So does this mean anyone can just copy all your stuff? When an open source client becomes available
will malicious users build versions that copy content? When island/estate owners get the ability to
roll back their simulators – won’t they potentially be able to copy no-copy
objects? What about residents hosting
their own simulators – doesn’t that move content onto hostile machines and
expose it to copying?

The answer in all four cases is “Yes, but . . .” In these
situations – and the many variations that have similar security implications –
someone could make a copy. However, how
they use the copy could violate copyright. Technology doesn’t suffice to prevent the act of copying, but laws exist
to discourage illegal uses. The DMCA,
for all of its anti-technology flaws, provides a takedown process as the
appropriate response for infringement. Yes the takedown process requires you to jump through some hoops, but
this is the law attempting to maintain a balance between the rights of creators
and the rights of owners.

As Second Life continues to grow and creations within it become
increasingly valuable there is no doubt that we will continue to see all manner
of behavior, including both fair use and infringement. Technology can not – and should not –
sacrifice fair use in a failed attempt to prevent infringement. Instead the residents and Linden Lab must
rely on law, culture, and community. Some of that exists today but far more must still be built.

One example is the concept of first use. Linden Lab is currently making changes to
make it easier to determine who originally created an asset and its creation
date. While much of this data currently
exists, it isn’t displayed in the UI. By
exposing this data, it will be much easier for residents in a conflict to be
able to clearly determine which texture or object was created first,
simplifying conflict resolution for all parties involved.

Another option – which we aren’t working on yet – would be
to offer either a registration or seal program for creators who are willing to
provide additional identifying information and who are committed to not
infringing on other residents’ content. If the finder makes it easy to search for content and locations that
participate in this program, then economic and social pressures combine to
reward creators who respect copyright and punish those who don’t.

Yet another idea – again, we’re not working on this yet,
just talking about it – would be to make copying of all content within SL
trivially easy, but to track appropriate metadata about who’s copied the
content and where it has been reused. Maybe even make that data publicly searchable. By making the act of copying easy, the
incentives to go around or hack the system are greatly reduced and the community
is better able to recognize and respect the wishes of creators. Plus, it would be much easier to implement
important concepts like “undo” which are incredibly complicated or impossible
when trying to preserve uniqueness.

These are simply early steps and initial ideas – I expect
the community will have excellent suggestions as well. I look forward to seeing discussions and
suggestions as we continue to improve Second Life for all its residents.

The downside to implementing watermarks or publishing first use data is that the uploaded textures may be copied from sources outside The Grid All Hail The Central Grid.

To me, it seems that LL will be unecessarily burdening the developers, community support personnel, and attorneys by putting themselves in the middle of disputes that are better settled by real people in the real world. It is our personal responsibility to protect our own rights in an environment where actual law and justice are available to us.

At most, if you do nothing, LL will have to provide real life information according to court orders. From a corporate perspective, it's really not any more complicated than that.

So does this mean anyone can just copy all your stuff? When an open source client becomes available will malicious users build versions that copy content? When island/estate owners get the ability to roll back their simulators – won’t they potentially be able to copy no-copy objects?

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